Make Pale Justice a quest reward for freeing Durdel Anatha's soul

wavingbug

Hello,

the way you aquire the longsword Pale Justice +4 does not make any sense. There is no way, other than coincidence, to aquire it.

In the Enhanced Edition you need to complete the quest to free Durdel Anatha's soul and then go back to the Artisan District of Lower Dorn's Deep. There are some houses where two Umber Hulks break through. This opens a passage and behind one of those houses where you can find a corpse carrying the sword.

There is no indicator during the quest of Durdel Anatha that the sword is hidden there. So why is the completion of that quest a required to trigger that event? Both seem completely unrelated. If you completed the Artisan District before completing Durdel Anatha's quest you would have no reason at all to go back there.

In my opinion there are three solutions to this:

1. Durdel Anatha was a paladin and Pale Justice is a weapon only paladins can wield. So it would make sense if he just drops it, so you can loot it from his corpse along with his remains after freeing him.

2. Make the triggering of the event unrelated to the completion of the quest. The sword is not mentioned anywhere so it would make sense to just disconnect the quest from the event. To my understanding this is how it has been in the original game. Why has it been changed in the Enhanced Edition?

3. A last option would be to just give the player hints or make its aquisition another quest. Just some way to let the player know about it. Perhaps Durdel could give those hints to connect it somehow to his quest.

It is a very powerful weapon and every player with a paladin in the group will want it. It does not make sense to hide it like that.


Thanks

sarevok57

i think pale justice was supposed to be more of an easter egg type weapon, and for those diligent enough to find it got rewarded for it

wavingbug

sarevok57 wrote: »

i think pale justice was supposed to be more of an easter egg type weapon, and for those diligent enough to find it got rewarded for it

But do you remember how it was in the original game? I read that the event where the two Umber Hulks break through the houses in the Artisan District did not depend on anything. Just walking near those houses would trigger the event and you could find the sword in the rubble. That would make it a lot easier to aquire because most players at least walk by that location and trigger the event.

sarevok57

wavingbug wrote: »

sarevok57 wrote: »

i think pale justice was supposed to be more of an easter egg type weapon, and for those diligent enough to find it got rewarded for it

But do you remember how it was in the original game? I read that the event where the two Umber Hulks break through the houses in the Artisan District did not depend on anything. Just walking near those houses would trigger the event and you could find the sword in the rubble. That would make it a lot easier to aquire because most players at least walk by that location and trigger the event.

i'm not 100% certain, but i dont even think pale justice was in the original game, and was one of those things that were cut out just before release, although i could be wrong, because it's been waaaaaay too long since i've played the original and i haven't played the original as much as i've played the bg series

jsaving

It was in the original game but often failed to trigger.

ineth

I agree with @wavingbug.
(In fact, I've had it on my mind for a while to sit down and file this as a bug report/feature request for Beamdog.)

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THE PROBLEM:

Probability that a newbie who diligently explores every area in the game but does not follow a walkthrough, happens to find Pale Justice:

• In the original game: Close to 100% (barring engine bugs that sometimes caused the script to misfire).
• In the EE: Close to 0%.

The EE requires you to first...

1. finish the Voice of Durdel Anatha quest (which is easily missed because it requires you to initiate dialog with a specific NPC during combat with very few clues pointing to that),
2. and then afterwards revisit a specific part of a map that you've probably already fully explored and considered "done" at this point (with ZERO clues pointing there).

That's just unreasonable.

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"BUT IT RESTORES A CUT QUEST!"

I don't know if this is how Black Isle designed the Voice quest (before cutting it), or if these were design choices made by the Gibberlings3 modders who restored the quest in their UB mod (which Beamdog copied into the EE).

But sometimes there is a reason that a quest is cut by the original devs, such as "it didn't feel right after all".
And even when a quest is cut purely due to development time constraints, chances are that it was cut before they finished tweaking and balancing it. Therefore, it's not good enough to just "restore" this unfinished version - you gotta give it another design iteration to make sure it's actually balanced & reasonable.

I hope Beamdog does this for the Voice quest, in one of the three ways @wavingbug suggested.

Baptor

Agree with those above, and to top it all off it's buggy as heck. If you talk to Nym after completing the Voice you can't get the sword anymore or the quest armor. Lost the armor on my last playthrough thanks to that.

SirBatince

in my experience 50% of the time umber hulks don't even burst from doors at all. nothing ever happens even when I keep walking on the trigger back and forth